Mav 33, 191 8 
Land &: Water 
17 
Future of the Farm Labourer: By Jason 
THE labourer, whose ancestoi' was a member of 
a living community with rights and property of 
his own, has become by the process described 
in an earher article, a mere wage-earner in a 
sweated industry. He has declined into the most 
despairing of all positions. For in the struggle of^he poorer 
classes against the social forces that threaten their independ- 
ence we can discern two elements of promise. The peasant 
is a man with some power of self-defence derived from his 
association with a community that is attached to the soil ; 
the town workman is a man with some power of self-defence 
derived from his association with his fellow-workmen in 
Trade Unions. History is full of examples of the strength 
of the peasant class. At our own doors we have a striking 
illustration in the success of the Irish peasant who by sheer 
tenacity and the mysterious comradeship of the soil has 
won from a very powerful aristocracy and a very powerful 
neighbour rights that the English labourer may well envy. 
As for the strength of the Trade I'nions, the evidence is 
unmistakable and convincing. 
Now the agriculturJil labourer is not a peasant ; he has 
none of the corporate fwwer of a society behind him. He 
is a labourer. Neither is he a Trade Unionist. All the con- 
ditions of his life and work have made the struggle for Trade 
Unionism a difficult and uphill fight. Men working in isolation 
or small groups on scattered farms are at a great disadvantage 
for Trade Union work ; they have no buildings, as a rule, 
where they can meet and discuss their affairs without fear ; 
they have none of the relative security of the town workman 
who is not tied to a single home or a single employment, 
and they work for a class which has been on the whole more 
suspicious of Trade Unions than any other employing class in 
the country. By an unhappy combination of misfortunes the 
class that needs Trade Unions more than any other is more 
handicapped than any other in its efforts to create them. 
Disease of Low Wages 
Any industry so circumstanced tends to become a sweated 
industry', and agricultural wages have reflected the short- 
sighted power of the backward employers. A most instruc- 
tive book was published the year the war broke out by Mr. 
Reginald I.ennard, under the title Eni^lish Agricultural Wages, 
which showed by a most careful ancl scholarly investigation 
that agriculture was suffering from the disease of low wages. 
This disease showed its results partly in the inefficiency of 
farmers for whom the apparent advantage of a low wage 
is an encouragement to idleness or to unenterprising and 
unprogressive farming, partly in the inefficienc}- of the 
labourers whose vigour is sapped by positive underfeeding 
and the general hopelcfssness of their outlook. Sir Daniel 
Hall, the Permanent' Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, 
has remarked that "many formers WEiste manual labour 
because it is cheap." And in agriculture, as in the early 
days of cotton factories, manual labour may be driven down 
to such a point that there is no inducement to introduce 
machinery. 
Sir William Osier has pointed out that it is dangerous 
to suppose from the comparatively good physique of the 
agricultural labourer that he is properly nourished, that a 
degree of underfeeding insufficient to show itsejf in measure- 
ments might be serious enough to reduce the capacity of 
a workman for physical toil. As for the general depression 
produced by low wages and poor prospects, we need only 
contrast the agricultural labourer in the best paid counties 
with his fellows in the worst paid counties. The truth has 
been well put by Sir Daniel Hall. "The farmer's general 
complaint is that the majority of his men are n<jt worth their 
wages, and that is probabjy true ; they will have to be more 
highly paid before they will earn their money." 
The first and essential condition of successful agricultural 
development is the emancipation of the labourer from these 
conditions. He must have a decent house ; he must have 
a decent wage ; the conditions of his employment must not 
be arbitrary or tyrannical, and village life must be revolu- 
tionised so as to turn him from a dependent wage-earner 
into a citizen with freedom and opportunity and social 
enjoyment. Thus it is not merely a reform here and a 
readjustment there that is wanted. It is the transfonnation 
of village life. 
A vigorous policy on these lines was urgently needed 
before the war ; the need to-day is more urgent than ever. 
For nobodv can suppose that tli*' '-.ilrhcr who has faced the 
unspeakable sufferings of this war will return to live the 
life that the labourer lived before the w-ar. Think of what 
his home has been in many a village. Sir Douglas Haig 
reminded his men in the most anxious moment of the fighting 
last month that they were defending their homes. In 
answer to that appeal men will give their last effort. What 
kind of home is it that is described in the reports of our 
Medical Officers oi Health ? In the villages there is not the 
excuse — such as it is — that space is limited, and yet the 
Medical Officer for Bedfordshire has pointed out that the 
insanitary conditions in the village cottages are often more 
serious than those usually to be found in town dwellings 
and that phthisis is very prevalent in onr rural country- homes. 
The Housing Problem 
When we ask why this state of things continues we are 
told that the labourer's wages are so low that he cannot 
afford to pay an economic rent. An overcrowded and 
defective cottage is not much consolation for a sweated wage. 
It is obvious that wages must be raised to cover the cost 
of housing, but we cannot wait for economic readjustments. 
The crisis is too serious for that. The nation must make 
provision for house building to begin immediately the war 
is over. From this point of view the policy which is appar- 
ently to be pursued by the Government is disastrously 
inadequate. The Local Government Board have issued a 
circular to local authorities asking for a report on local 
deficiencies and undertaking to bear three-quarters of the 
loss on building schemes. Now this means that there will 
be delay in many places and inaction in many others. We 
know what the terror of the countryside about rates is like, 
and any half-hearted authority will be so afraid of this prospect 
of a new burden that it will be exceedingly reluctant to commit 
itself to any Scheme at all. 
The right principle is to recognise that in this tremendous 
emergency the responsibility for re-housing the nation is 
national and not local. The returning soldier has fought 
for the nation, and not merely for his village, and the nation 
owes it to him to see that he has a decent home in the country 
he has defended. The Government, that is, must guarantee 
the local authority againfet loss, and it must see that the local 
authority carries out an adequate scheme. For this purpose 
the County Council should be substituted for the District 
Council, and the schemes will, of course, be designed with a 
view to the needs and circumstarlces of larger areas than the 
area of a District Council. -This is an immediately urgent policy. 
There arc in existence at this moment two types of insti- 
tutions that the war has brought into existence upon which 
we shall have to rely in great part for the successful trans- 
formation of village life. One is the Agricultural Wages 
Board set up under Section 5 of the Corn Production Act 
of last year. It is the duty of this Board, which consists 
of representatives of employers and labourers in equal 
numbers with additional members appointed by the Board 
of Agriculture, to fix minimum rates of wages. This Central 
Board has established thirty-nine district wages committees, 
formed on the same principle, acting in some cases for a 
single county and in others for two or more counties grouped 
together. These committees make recommendations to the 
Central Board, and their recommendation takes the forrn 
of a proposed weekly wage for a given number of hours. 
These recommendations are considered, and the Board after 
hearing objections gives its award. 
Now the creation of this Board and these Committees is 
a ste?p of great importance. Hitherto wages have been kept 
down in agriculture by the weakness of the labourers and 
the power of custom and solidarity among farmers. It has 
been supposed to be imi)roper and almost dishonourable 
for a farmer to give higher wages tlian his neighbours. In 
some districts the more enterprising farmer gives presents 
on the sly. 
At a Wages Board the good employer counts, and the 
establishment of a judicial wage breaks the ice. But in 
practice the Board docs more than fix minimum wages, 
for a committee recommends a certain wage for certain hours. 
That is to say, the working davof the rural labourer is regulated, 
and any time o\'er and above the fixed limit becomes overtime 
to be paid for at special rates. When a Wages Board is set 
up, it soon assumes other powers than those of fixing wages ; 
it tends to protect the workman from other abuses. That 
has been the experience of the Trade Boards in sweated 
industries where the regulation of wages has been followed 
